anyways the genius thing about the way john gaius has set up his empire - and the genius thing about the way TM has structured the books - is that there are multiple ways to view him. gideon the ninth starts by painting him as this unknowable and inscrutable god figure - the King Undying, the Kindly Prince of Death! - and through most of that book he is more of an emblem than anything. a symbol of dominicus, the patriarch of the nine houses, the divine being of whom the eighth house has a massive fucking portrait for some reason, and ultimately the key to what sets this version of the solar system apart from our own.
harrow the ninth strips him down. he’s not just a god anymore. he’s a cool god. he makes shitty jokes. he eats peanuts. he fucks his friends on the dining room table. he tells our main character that he sees her as a daughter figure. he shows emotion; he makes mistakes; there are things that he cannot do. if gideon the ninth introduces him as the wizard of oz’s huge and intimidating head, then harrow the ninth is john pulling back his own curtain to show the man behind it. see! he’s kind of pathetic! he’s Just Like You!
and both of these images of john ultimately serve the same purpose, because they both play to his favor. whether you fear him or you woobify him, you have fallen into the trap he has set for you. because nona shows us an even truer john, a john who doomed the world and fucked it all up, a john convinced he was in the right even as his friends killed themselves in front of him. if harrow pulls back the curtain, nona peels off his face.
it does make me wonder whether there is a secret, smaller, fourth john gaius that will be explored in alecto the ninth. alecto is the only being in the universe who really and truly knows him. she knows what he’s done and why he did it. she chose him for a reason. beneath the god and beneath the god pretending to be a man and beneath the man pretending to be a god - is there truly just a man? is there anything left?
tl;dr version: john gaius is like an onion. john gaius has layers too
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